


178 Rejections Later

by StarlightDragon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Human, First Kiss, Fluff, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Prankster Gabriel, Unrequited Crush, that Lily and James Potter AU nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 01:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6174187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightDragon/pseuds/StarlightDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hogwarts' best prankster Gabriel Novak meets shy, studious Sam Winchester on the train ride to school their first year, only to spend the next six years trying to convince Sam to go on a date with him. Sam refuses every single time, and Gabriel starts seventh year thinking that he'll never have the boy of his dreams. He's wrong, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	178 Rejections Later

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RavenclawRachel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenclawRachel/gifts).



> Rachel - I'm sorry for how late this is! Blame my professors for setting midterms that interfere with fic writing. ;) Hope you enjoy it anyway! I know how much you love Harry Potter and I couldn't get it out of my head how similar Sam and Gabriel are to Lily and James, so I decided to write the thing.

When he was eleven years old, Gabriel Novak met Sam Winchester for the first time. They were on the train together, ready to start their first year at Hogwarts. Gabriel was early to Platform Nine and Three Quarters, eager to finally be off to school, and consequently he was one of the first on the train. He grabbed a compartment to himself, and he decided that it would be funny to rub Muggle chalk all over the seat next to him, ready to mess up some other kid's clothes when they sat down.

It was a while before anybody did, but when it finally happened, the boy who sat next to Gabriel was the perfect victim. It was clearly his first day too, and he looked nervous and walked stiffly in his perfectly pressed navy blue trousers. He didn't talk to Gabriel the entire train journey, and Gabriel wasn't sure the boy even breathed. A few other kids sat down with them too, more first years who actually spoke and who Gabriel made friends with, and he was so busy enjoying himself that he almost forgot about the prank.

When it was time to change into their robes and the quiet boy finally stood up, he was greeted with a shout of laughter from Balthazar, one of Gabriel's new friends who pointed to the beautiful white stain on the kid's trousers, shouting "Hey, looks like the nerd sat in some owl poop!"

Upon seeing what had happened to him, the boy started to cry, and he ran out into the corridor, causing even more people to see him and stare at him, all of them laughing. Gabriel felt a tiny bit bad about upsetting the other kid, but considering the number of other kids who were leaning over to offer congratulations and high fives, he quickly forgot about it, and just started enjoying his newfound success as the best prankster at Hogwarts

\--

When he was twelve years old, Gabriel changed his mind. He'd spent the whole of first year thinking that Sam was a total nerd, laughing at him every chance he got, confused as to why anybody wanted to be friends with or even talk to such a loser. Even though he knew that his eyes sometimes fixed on Sam for far too long, and he couldn't make himself tear them away, he refused to let himself think about it. He told himself that he was just trying really hard to think of new ways he could make fun of or prank Sam. 

But now Gabriel saw Sam differently. He didn't think of Sam as a nerd, or at least, he didn't mean it as an insult. Things were changing, and the chatter around the lunch table was less fixated on Quidditch trading cards and more fixated on which girls they all thought were cute. Gabriel thought a lot of girls were cute, and he said so, both at the lunch table and to their faces. The one thing he kept very, very secret, was that he thought Sam was the cutest of all.

\--

When he was thirteen years old, Gabriel hid from his feelings. He was in third year, and according to every issue of Witch Weekly that he totally didn't borrow from his friend Jo, his crushes were meant to come and go every five minutes. He wasn't supposed to spend years with his heart jumping in his chest every time he saw one particular boy. And as someone who grew up with three older brothers who used to pick on him and then laugh if he ever showed how upset it made him, he was really damn good at hiding from his feelings. With his brothers, he'd found that the easiest thing to do was to be mean to them and pull pranks, which was how he'd got so good at them in the first place. He didn't want to be mean to Sam, because it wasn't fun making somebody cry, but he did want to pull pranks. Pranks were fun. The way Sam's ears went red and he glared at Gabriel, focusing all his attention on him, after Gabriel had pulled off yet another successful prank, was even more fun.

\--

When he was fourteen years old, Gabriel found the courage to ask Sam out for the first time. They were in fourth year, which meant that for the first time they were allowed to go to the Yule Ball, complete with dressing up and sitting down to eat and most importantly of all, dates.

A lot of the fourth years didn't take dates, since they were still nervous about the whole idea of 'dancing in public' and preferred to stay in a big group of friends, but Gabriel wanted to go with someone. He wanted to show Sam that now they were starting their OWL work, he was more mature. There was more to Gabriel than just the kid who always played pranks on Sam, and he thought that if he could convince Sam to go to the dance with him, he'd have a chance to show him that. So, after giving himself pep talks every morning for several weeks to psych himself up for it, he finally decided to ask the question.

Gabriel aimed a water balloon at Sam's head on the walk back to the castle from Herbology - perfect shot. It exploded and drenched the majetic moose hair in warm water; warm because it was December and they were outside and Gabriel wasn't a complete monster. Sam looked outraged as he turned around to see Gabriel standing there grinning, and Gabriel was a little offended that Sam hadn't immediately known it was him.

"What the hell was that for, Novak?" Sam scowled, and Sam never cursed even a little bit so Gabriel already knew this was serious, but still he continued.

"Just trying to get your attention! I got something to ask you."

Sam rolled his eyes, clearly expecting an insult. "You could have just come over and tapped me on the shoulder like a normal person."

"Alright, I will," Gabriel retorted, walking over to Sam and giving him a sharp jab in the shoulder. "Yo, Samsquatch."

"What is it, Gabriel?" Sam replied, his lips pursed tight.

"You wanna go to the Yule Ball? Like, with me, as my date?" Gabriel sounded confident, but he was trembling inside, because he'd never confessed to anything like this before - how could he? He'd never had these feelings for anyone but Sam - and he was terrified.

"You have got to be crazy if you think I'd want to waste an entire evening of my life with you."

Gabriel felt like he would never recover from the pain in his chest. He'd take being hit with a million freezing water balloons outdoors in winter, rather than this.

\--

When he was fifteen years old, Gabriel tried again. Yes, he'd been rejected the first time, but that had been ages ago. He'd lost count of the number of couples he knew who had got together, broken up, each got together with different people, broken up with those people, vowed to be single for the rest of their high school careers and promptly got back together with the original person again, since then. And here Gabriel was, and he'd had none of that drama. He'd just spent an entire year daydreaming about Sam Winchester. Even when he'd tried to focus on something or someone else, it always ended up coming back to Sam. 

In the end, the circumstances were oddly similar to the first time he'd asked. He waited until Hogwarts had what everyone thought would be the last real snowfall of the winter, at the end of February, when half their year got together after school to have a massive snowball fight. He didn't expect that it was something Sam would want to get involved in, but in actual fact, Sam was one of the most active participants, strategizing with people and forming alliances, pelting as many snowballs as he could.

Gabriel should not have found Sam getting competitive as hot as he did.

Finally, Gabriel had his chance. He and a few of his team members had Sam surrounded, each of them holding two snowballs, about to launch them at him. Sam tried his best to hide in his coat, crying out a "Help!" to his own teammates, but none of them came.

"If you agree to go on a date with me, none of these snowballs get thrown!" Gabriel yelled.

Sam yanked his hood down and spread his arms wide, not even trying to shield himself. "It's just snow. I'm not  _ that _ desperate to avoid it."

The rejection hurt a tiny bit less the second time. Just a tiny bit, but that was still an improvement.

\--

When he was sixteen years old, Gabriel asked out Sam no fewer than one hundred and seventy-six times. He'd have done it even more often, but he did consider himself a romantic, and he wanted it to be special. He thought that if he just went up to Sam in the hallways and said, "Yo, Sam, will you go on a date with me?" all the time, it would be tacky. So instead, he made sure to wait for perfect opportunities, or to set things up in advance to create the best possible scenario with the best chance of results.

The flash mob was definitely one of his best. Forty kids helping him sing a sped up version of 'Love Story' by Taylor Swift in the middle of the Gryffindor common room that ended up with him getting down on one knee and handing Sam a bunch of flowers he'd just conjured, was a moment that he was sure would make history in the school, even if it did end with Sam scowling and shoving the flowers down the back of Gabriel's robes. Another highlight had been the time he'd sent an owl to everyone in Sam's Potions class except Sam himself saying that the class had been moved to a different dungeon, causing Sam to show up to his regular classroom and find it empty. Gabriel had then ran in, pretending to panic, and yelled, "Sam! Sam! Your entire Potions class has been kidnapped! The kidnapper says the only way you'll ever get them back is if you agree to be my boyfriend!"

It was easy to ask somebody out when you knew they were going to say no. By this point he didn't actually believe that he was going to wear Sam down, as much as he wished it would happen. But he couldn't stop himself. It was their special thing, and it was a way of guaranteeing that Sam would always notice him. And to Gabriel, Sam noticing him was far, far better than Sam just forgetting about him, going about his perfect life with his perfect friends and never sparing a thought for the boy in the corner who was desperately in love with him and couldn't imagine a future without him.

They were in History of Magic together, the only class that they shared this year, and Professor Turner asked about the causes of the First Wizarding War. Gabriel raised his hand and the teacher pointed to him.

"The biggest problem was that Sam Winchester refused to go out with me. So what do you say, Sam? Let me take you to dinner on Friday so that we can avoid any of this happening again."

\--

When he was seventeen years old, Gabriel gave up.

He'd gone too far and he knew it. At this point, Sam wasn't going to say yes to him no matter what, probably partly because he expected Gabriel to be insufferable if they did finally go on a date, running around the castle for hours and yelling "I told you so!" into everyone's faces. Gabriel hated to admit it, but for any of the times he'd asked last year, Sam would have been right about that. And Gabriel felt bad. Nobody should have to walk around their high school every day constantly looking over their shoulder in fear, waiting for the next time someone caused a massive scene by trying to ask them out.

He couldn't exactly make up for putting Sam through that the whole of the previous year, but he could stop now, and make sure that Sam's seventh year was as stress free as possible.

So that's what he did. He stayed out of Sam's way, and even when he did pass him in the corridor, he forced himself to keep his eyes fixed to the ground, not even looking at Sam - even though it hurt him to know that beautiful face was so close by. He bought new notebooks, and this time he didn't doodle 'Mr. Gabriel Winchester' on any of them. He stopped talking about Sam to his friends. He stopped looking through Sam's Facebook pictures. He did his very, very best to pretend Sam didn't even exist, because he knew that was what Sam wanted.

It worked, until it didn't.

Gabriel was minding his own business, just sitting in the dustiest corner of a library where Madam Pince was least likely to come by, a book open on the desk in front of him, messaging Balthazar via instant parchment about their new plan of making fake student records for Muggle celebrities and slipping them into the staff room when nobody was looking - when he heard the  _ thunk _ of a backpack on the floor and saw somebody slide into the chair right next to him.

Gabriel glanced up, and was horrified to see that it was Sam.

There was no way Gabriel could avoid him now.

"Hey, Sam," he muttered awkwardly.

Sam didn't respond. He reached out and grabbed Gabriel by the neck of his robes, tugging him forwards and crashing their lips together.

Gabriel grunted in surprise and be was so taken aback that he forgot to close his eyes, but he couldn't stop himself from kissing back, instinct taking over for him because this was  _ Sam _ , Sam who he'd wanted to kiss probably since the first moment he'd ever saw him on the train in first year, Sam whose lips molded so perfectly to his just like he'd always imagined they would, Sam who made fireworks go off in Gabriel's mind just by being in the same room with him, fireworks that were ten times as bright and intense now that he had Sam's lips moving against him in just the right way.

Sam pulled away, but he kept a hand on Gabriel's shoulder, his eyes still closed as he whispered, "You haven't asked me out this year."

"That's cause you always said no. Thought you wanted me to stop," Gabriel whispered back once he'd regained his speech functions.

"I was going to say yes. The first day back at school, on the train this year? I dressed up, Gabriel, I had a speech prepared, I even had chocolates in my bag to give to you. I was so sure you were going to come by my compartment and ask me out, same as you always did, and I was finally going to say yes. I was so excited for it. I'd missed you so much over the summer. I never expected to miss an annoying little shit like you who wouldn't take no for an answer, but that's what happened. Even though I had friends, I never felt like I brought anything special to the group. Thought that if I dropped out of Hogwarts they wouldn't even notice a hole. But you? You paid attention to me, only to me, and I appreciated it. And I felt so lonely without it."

"And then I didn't ask you." Gabriel's face fell at the memory of spending the whole train ride playing Exploding Snap with Charlie. Of course he'd stopped at exactly the wrong time. Of course the one hundred and seventy-ninth time would have been the time Sam had said yes.

"You didn't. And I went up to my dormitory that night and I cried. And you kept not asking, and not asking, and I thought you were bored of me. Thought you'd moved onto someone else. But I didn't know for sure, and I couldn't stand not knowing, and I just got so frustrated-"

"So you kissed me," Gabriel grinned. "You thought I was _so_ amazing that you just _had_ to kiss me."

"You don't have to be so smug. I can still change my mind."

Gabriel knew he was pushing his luck, but he couldn't stop his grin from getting even bigger. "I told you we were meant to be together, Sammy!"

Sam sighed, giving up. "Yeah. Yeah, we are. You just realized it five years earlier than I did. And don't get me wrong, you were an asshole about the whole thing, and I hate the way you handled it. But we've all done stupid things in our lives. I once accidentally turned in a five page extract from the Muggle Communist Manifesto instead of my Transfiguration essay on the discovery of Vanishing Spells. Don't know how the hell that even happened, but it was pretty stupid of me."

"That's cause I swapped your papers when you weren't looking," Gabriel mumbled, ashamed. 

Sam stared at him, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips. "You did?"

"I can't believe you're even surprised."

"I just- you've pulled so many pranks on me that it's crazy for me to think that there are more that I don't even know about, you know?"

"Fuck, Sam, there's loads of them! I couldn't even believe it that one time I charmed your backpack to shout rude words all day so that everyone who walked past thought that your bag was insulting them, and you didn't even notice. I thought I was being so obvious there. And then there was that time when--"

Gabriel stopped abruptly, and Sam frowned. "When what?"

"Just thinking that maybe I should save some of these stories. That way I'll always have something fun to tell you that you haven't heard before. And it'll be a reason for you to stick around - knowing that I have more stories to share."

"Gabriel, you were a dick to me for six years. If I'm still kissing you now despite all that, my feelings have got to be pretty strong. I don't need any extra reasons to stick around."

Gabriel smiled at that, leaning forward to rest his head against Sam's, hoping against hope that nobody else would come into their secret corner of the library and disturb what Gabriel was completely positive was the best moment of his entire life.

After a moment he pulled back, fiddling nervously with a stray thread on the sleeve of his robes as he asked, "Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"When I ask you to marry me someday, don't put me through all of this again. My heart can't take it. Just say yes the first time, won't you?"

Sam leaned in close, gazing into Gabriel's eyes with tenderness, parting his lips just a tiny bit ready to kiss him--

\--and then he pulled back, a huge smirk on his face.

"I'm actually looking forward to the one hundred and seventy-nine times you'll have to propose to me."

**Author's Note:**

> Kinda want to write a Team Free Love Marauders AU now. Help persuade me to not do something so ridiculous at **casandsip.tumblr.com**


End file.
